John-Richard’s continued investment in artists and their work has earned the company a finalist spot in Wall Décor at the 37th annual ARTS Awards, recognizing the strength of an offering built around artistic individuality.
JOHN-RICHARD continues to expand its art offering by investing in talented artists and fostering lasting creative relationships. The company’s more than decade-long relationship with Mary Hong exemplifies that approach, while its art curation program, led by renowned artist Carol Benson-Cobb, seeks out new artists and brings their work into the brand’s expansive selection. Carter and Tremaine are joined by Angelika Rainer, Ann Flemings, Heidi Gould and Wu Yanquin, promising a broad range of artistic perspectives in the gallery pieces at High Point Market this fall. John-Richard’s continued investment in artists and their work has earned the company a finalist spot in Wall Décor at the 37th annual ARTS Awards, recognizing the strength of an offering built around artistic individuality.
MARY HONG
“Her work brings together painting and kiln-formed glass in compositions that are dimensional, tactile and responsive to light.” For more than a decade, Mary Hong’s distinctive artwork has been part of the John-Richard offering. Her work brings together painting and kilnformed glass in compositions that are dimensional, tactile and responsive to light. Having worked across painting, mosaics and glass throughout her career, Hong has developed a practice in which materials influence one another.
Her pieces begin with a painting, which she develops and reworks until glass can enter the process. Melted in a kiln, the glass becomes either a focal point or dimensional accent, introducing depth and texture to the painted surface. Light becomes an active part of the finished work. Hong considers how a piece changes with its surroundings and viewing angle, allowing colors and forms to shift as viewers move around it. She first considers whether a piece succeeds as artwork on its own, then imagines how it will interact with the furniture, colors and atmosphere of a room. Hong’s relationship with John-Richard began when a company representative discovered her work in a Florida showroom and recommended her to the team. Initially skeptical of the unexpected inquiry, she agreed to explore whether her glass-based work could be reproduced. More than a decade later, the collaboration continues. Hong is especially impressed by the care given to those reproductions, praising their precision while appreciating the intentional imperfections of her originals. For an artist whose work is rooted in the interaction of materials and light, the enduring relationship has become, in her words, “the cherry on the top.”
DIANA TREMAINE “Marks remain visible and elements are often left unresolved.”
For Diana Tremaine, a horse is never simply a horse. The Montanabased artist begins with the recognizable, drawing inspiration from the people and animals around her. As a painting develops, however, the subject becomes something larger. A gesture, the curve of a shoulder, or the shadow cast by a piece of tack can suggest an emotional experience beyond the moment that inspired the work. “I’m more interested in the end in the overall composition and the breakdown of the image,” Tremaine explains. “Everything is transient. Nothing stays the same.”
That idea of transience shapes her process. Once she understands what draws her to a subject, Tremaine begins to disrupt it. Oil paint is added, scraped, rolled, obscured and rebuilt, leaving traces of what came before. She works without a rigid outcome, responding to each mark and color as the painting develops. The approach reflects two contrasting influences: her early exposure to contemporary art in New York City and her later life in Bozeman, Montana, where the natural world provides constant inspiration. Her work brings the two together, preserving the recognizable qualities of horses and figures while reimagining them through an abstract lens. Marks remain visible and elements are often left unresolved, encouraging viewers to see the paintings as more than depictions of horses, hares or people. Given time, the familiar can become something more universal: the fleeting, shared experience of being alive. Within an interior, Tremaine believes art provides a dimension that design alone cannot. “It brings in the humanity,” she says. Her paintings invite viewers to look again, linger longer and find something beyond what they first saw.
SARAH GAYLE CARTER “Her paintings transform rolling hills and distant mountain vistas into bold compositions.”
Sarah Gayle Carter sees the landscape through a designer’s eye. The Virginia-based artist transforms rolling hills, fields and distant Blue Ridge mountains into bold compositions, simplifying forms and exaggerating color. Attention to line, proportion and structure gives them contemporary character.
She begins with a photograph, often from her Shenandoah Valley home. Carter crops each image before translating it to canvas, exaggerating color, texture and form. Horizons become pronounced, fields emphasized, and distant mountains shift from blue to purple. Rather than reproduce the landscape, she aims to show viewers what she sees. Carter describes painting as a collaboration, each decision informing the next. Oil paint, palette knives and smooth surfaces build clean lines and layered textures, while a burnt sienna ground remains visible in flashes of warmth. Recognizable forms and heightened color invite attention. Viewers familiar with similar landscapes often tell her they never noticed their layers or changing colors until seeing them in her paintings. “I want to give people that,” she says. Her distinct approach grew from a background in design. Before painting again, she ran a custom rug business serving the design trade and later designed furniture, lamps, mirrors and other products through licensing. Her experience taught her to refine forms, color and composition. “I’m really a designer pretending to be a painter,” she says. Carter’s partnership with John-Richard brings her back to familiar territory. She once maintained a High Point showroom and spent years working with furniture showrooms. She leaves placement to the homeowner or designer rather than creating for a particular interior. Her work bridges traditional and contemporary interiors through simplified forms.
More about the details that make up this issue. In order of appearance. GBG-3350 | Mary Hong’s Field of Gold No. 1 GBG-3349 | Mary Hong’s Supernova GBG-3367 | Diana Tremaine’s Heart GBG-3342 | Diana Tremaine’s White Pelicans GBG-3368 | Diana Tremaine’s Digilant GBG-3410 | Sarah Gayle Carter’s Siloed
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FURNISHING LIFE, BEAUTIFULLY